Books to read – November 2014

Just in time for your Thanksgiving holiday (if you live here in the US), here’s my list of must-reads for November 2014.  As usual, it’s a pretty diverse set of books to choose from.  I hope you enjoy these selections as much as I did.

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis

If you’ve followed this blog for a long time, you know that I have been, and will always be, a big Michael Lewis fan.  I picked up Flash Boys earlier this fall and, as usual, was immediately hooked.  Lewis’ ability to capture your attention from the first page is simply remarkable.  Flash Boys is another inside story, with the subject of this one being the onset of High-Frequency Trading (HFT) and how it has completely changed the business of stock trading.  I have to confess I was probably a bit in the dark in realizing just how large an impact algorithmic trading has had on the markets as we know them today.  Lewis tells the story of how the seeds of HFT were sown, and then the remarkable tale of how four renegades set about to fix the inequities created by these new systems.  It’s an easy read, thoroughly enjoyable, and my must-read for this month.

Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet’s Largest Mammals by Peter Heller

Hopefully by now you’ve read last month’s Peter Heller selection, Hell or High Water.  If not, you should.  I picked up Whale Warriors about a day after finishing Hell or High Water because I had really enjoyed Heller’s storytelling and beautiful writing style.  I didn’t particularly care about the subject matter at the beginning, but thought I’d probably learn something along the way.  Again, I was blown away by Heller’s ability to put me in the middle of the action.  Whale Warriors is the story of environmental revolutionary Paul Watson and his crew aboard the Farley Mowat as they follow Japanese whalers in the Antarctic illegally killing whales.  If you’ve ever watched Deadliest Catch, you’ll have a sense for the kinds of conditions the ship was in as it hunted the Japanese. Watson is a bit much (at least for me) in his radical dedication to a non-human species, but I very much admire his willingness to put his life on the line every day for what he believes in.  He has no fear of death and lives accordingly.  I will warn you that there are parts of this book that are very hard to read, as Heller describes in detail how whales are hunted in the modern era.

Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson

I didn’t use to think much about Sir Richard Branson.  He was just a flashy, arrogant rich guy as far as I was concerned.  Then I read this book and realized I had pegged the guy completely wrong.  Richard Branson, in my estimation, is one of the heroes of our day.  He runs a global empire of over 300 companies and is willing to try anything, including making his own soda or sending people into space.  Losing My Virginity tells the stories of his earliest days up to present day, including all of the failures, near-death experiences, and of course his successes, such as signing the Rolling Stones to his (at the time) fledgling Virgin Records label. But probably the coolest thing I discovered about Branson was after reading this book.  I watched A Day in the Life on Hulu and was stunned by how he treated other people. He is so gracious to everyone he meets along the way, and completely genuine.  Branson is, by any measure, a runaway success and a guy worth knowing more about.  Read the book and watch the video.

That’s it for this month!  Stay tuned for my upcoming December list, and as always thanks for reading.  Let me know what you think of this month’s list by leaving a comment below.